


let me photograph you in this light

by cosmicpoet



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt No Comfort, Post-Game, Simulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-06-29
Packaged: 2019-05-30 12:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15096404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmicpoet/pseuds/cosmicpoet
Summary: There's a difference after Danganronpa. Maki loves Kaito but...Well, he's different.





	let me photograph you in this light

Breakfast is cold, lunch is cold, dinner is cold. Shuichi dropped them off days ago, but Maki let them go cold on the counter and couldn’t find the motivation to even warm them up in the microwave. She tells everyone that she’s still not… _over_ Danganronpa, but that’s not the whole truth; she hasn’t had flashbacks of the game for a good five years now, but she’s still not right. Inside her, squirming and swarming like maggots in a corpse, she has the remnants of who she was before, and who she was during the game. Now, she’s just a ghost, a remnant of the mixed realities stuck within the pit of her stomach, and she can’t exist when she’s unsure of which plane of existence she’s meant to stand upon.

And then there’s Kaito. Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Stars, who lifted her up in the game and smiled at her, told her she could love herself, exposed himself as a fraud, a _psychopath,_ someone who had only applied for murder and fame and glory.

She had sat by his bed, begging him to wake up for months. There were nights - almost every night - where she held his hand and lay her head on his chest to mark the rise and fall of his breathing; she defied nurses and Danganronpa all in one, and she remembers with bittersweet nostalgia this time, when she believed with the hope that _he’d given her_ that things could finally be okay.

And then…

“Get the fuck off me,” he’d said, voice groggy and still hooked up to wires and IV drips, “who are you, lady?”

And then she’d run away. That was seven years ago.

Still, she gets by. The birds outside her window still sing obnoxiously, and she still lives off her monthly payments from Team Danganronpa. Still. That’s all she is…just a pond on a thick, humid day, waiting for someone to throw a rock into the pit of her life.

And Shuichi tries. He’s a lot more stable now, but he has yet to contact Kokichi even now, though Maki encourages him to. It’s not like they all woke up from the simulation with one half of their lives forgetting who they were, and she thinks that Shuichi is being quite selfish to throw away the opportunity he has to reconnect with people. But he brings her food when she can’t get out of bed, and…she’d say _“that’s alright”,_ but that would be, like everything else, a lie.

Maki can tell that today will be a bad day by the way the grey clouds cling to the sky, and the reminder on her phone that Kaito’s book signing is today. It’s self-torture, in a way, to go and act like his biggest fan now, when in the simulation they’d been side by side on equal ground. She won’t ask him to sign anything for her, but she just wants to see him from a distance - perhaps imagining that, if life had gone down another path, she would have been holding his hand again.

There are no traces of red in her wardrobe. There are no traces of red on her lips, because it would only get rubbed off on the back of her hand and then she’d look like a sad old woman with nobody to love; no, she wears all black. A widow without a coffin.

And then the bus ride passes her by. And then the walk to the bookstore passes her. And then…

Well, then…

_There he is._

His hair is still purple, but brighter now - surely his stylist has made the effort to play up the ‘Luminary of the Stars’ front, but he just looks fake. Not that she’s one to comment, she fell in love with a creation of Team Danganronpa, and now she’s confronted with the real thing and it _hurts._

She couldn’t bring herself to buy his book when it was released last month. Instead, she stealthily steals someone’s copy from their chair when they’re not looking, running her hands over the cover.

**_To The Stars: A Journey through Danganronpa and Space Travel.  
_ ** _Kaito Momota; Participant in Series 53_

Oh yeah, Maki remembers. After the game, he’d been given an honorary flight into zero gravity because of his talent in the game; but it wasn’t the Kaito that she had known going up there. There was no inspiration, no imagination, nothing to push forward to the final frontier - it was all cameras and press pictures and signing autographs, and then he had spent five minutes in zero gravity before returning to the planet that he was happy to die on.

What hurts more is that Maki can’t pretend like he simply didn’t know who she was. His memory returned, like the rest of the participants’ memories did, but his personality remained stuck in the state he was before the game. Gunning for fame and money and nothing at all like love.

The audience participation begins, and everyone starts asking Kaito questions as he stands on the stage, waving and smiling with his artificially-stained white teeth, no longer stained with the simple human pleasure of the cigarettes that she’s sure he’s swapped out for cigars now.

“Kaito,” someone in the audience pipes up, “what was it _like_ being in Danganronpa?”

“C’mon, man,” Kaito laughs falsely, “that’s a loaded question, and I get asked it so many times. Let’s go with something more fun, shall we?”

“A-Alright,” the audience member falters, “uh…have you contacted any of the participants from the show since you got out?”

“Uh,” now it’s Kaito’s turn to stumble, but he composes himself, “nah. They were never my friends. We were all just fake, y’know? But damn it was a good lie. I almost had myself convinced I was in love or some shit!”

“With Maki Harukawa?”

“Maki Rol- I mean…Maki Harukawa? Nah, I mean I guess maybe in the game, but I ain’t seen her since. We don’t talk.”

“Why not?”

“Guess we’ve both moved on.”

_(I’ve not.)_

“Did you love her?”

“Did I…I mean, no way! I wasn’t me. That guy on screen was just my brain doing mad things in the simulation, mixed with the plot lines Danganronpa wrote for me. Gotta say, it was a convincing story but…that just ain’t how I roll.”

_(It’s still convincing.)_

“Did you almost say Maki Roll then?”

“Yeah, probably,” Kaito laughs awkwardly, “but I don’t know what they did to my brain, it’s probably just muscle memory or somethin’ from in the game.”

_(Call me Maki Roll again. Call me anything. Just talk to me.)_

“Could you love her now?”

“What? Nah…she’s a different person. I haven’t even talked to her. I love you guys - my fans! You’re my number one.”

_(I love you.)_

The crowd erupts. Nobody notices a sad woman slip away through the back entrance, the glint in Kaito’s eye burning her as she plays Icarus once more.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Let me photograph you in this light_  
>  In case it is the last time  
> That we might be exactly like we were  
> Before we realized  
> We were sad of getting old  
> It made us restless  
>  **  
> _When We Were Young - Adele_  
>  **
> 
>  
> 
> Hope you liked this, please leave a comment if you did! I came up with this idea because someone was singing/playing this song outside and I could hear it through my open window. This fic is dedicated to Nebbie!
> 
> Also, important note: I haven't forgotten about 'Heaven's Gate' or 'Does His Love Make Your Head Spin?'. They should be updated sometime in the next few weeks. I had my exam on the 19th June and came home for summer last Saturday, so I've just been relaxing, and tomorrow I'm going on holiday. But I promise I haven't forgotten and I'll be back with updates really soon! Love you all!


End file.
